I watched footage from an old baseball game and was fascinated by what I saw. People dressed modestly. Reacting civilly. Celebrating enthusiastically. They weren’t tearing things up. They weren’t tearing each other down. I felt like I was watching an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”

Where has this country gone? A country that so valued liberty it wouldn’t cede an inch of it to more government is now considering with grave seriousness becoming socialist. Instead of working hard and sowing your own rewards, now you will work hard to provide rewards for others and there will not be gratitude. There will be expectation. You’ve had “too much.” You earned “too much.” On the basis of absolutely nothing other than what you look like, you were surely “privileged.” No longer will there be an institutional assessment of justice, now the “mob” will be the judge and jury, often on the spot.

The left excuses and encourages all of this. They march in protest and in the wake garbage, human excrement, violence, vulgarity — so be it. The privileged should pay for and clean up their mayhem.

The irresponsible demand that all must have the same comes often from those with no intention of sacrificing themselves. Socialism has failed time and again because those encouraging it intend never to live the principles. So their own kind of elite exists while stirring the masses to demand from everyone except them. If Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer believed their ideas for all, why wouldn’t they voluntarily live socialist principles? Surely they could give up one house?

The premise that government can and should be all things for all people, personal choice and responsibility have no bearing on a life, is reflected in the left’s shaming other Americans who do not sympathize with the plight of gang members, human traffickers, hard-core porn participants, felons, illegal immigrants and others who choose to give little or no regard to anyone except themselves. The conversation about cost, benefit and who pays is silenced by the insisted shame. Those making the demands have little vested interest in answers because for them, whether privileged or not, it will be others who will be required to prop up this impractical fantasy. Like in every other version of this expected redistribution of wealth, it all breaks down when the curtain is pulled back and the wizard is just a little person without a magic wand.

Economist Ludwig von Mises wrote: “In fact, however, the supporters of the welfare state are utterly anti-social and intolerant zealots. For their ideology tacitly implies that the government will exactly execute what they themselves deem right and beneficial. They entirely disregard the possibility that there could arise disagreement with regard to the question of what is right and expedient and what is not. They advocate enlightened despotism, but they are convinced that the enlightened despot will in every detail comply with their own opinion concerning the measures to be adopted. ... They want to exterminate all opponents, that is, all those who disagree with them. They are utterly intolerant and are not prepared to allow any discussion. Every advocate of the welfare state and of planning is a potential dictator. What he plans is to deprive all other men of all their rights, and to establish his own and his friends' unrestricted omnipotence. He refuses to convince his fellow-citizens. He prefers to ‘liquidate’ them. He scorns the ‘bourgeois’ society that worships law and legal procedure. He himself worships violence and bloodshed.”

If you’re reading this and rolling your eyes, I caution you. A society that thinks it never will be controlled, will be by either inaction, disbelief, ignorance or apathy.

So if your contribution to this great nation’s survival is disparaging candidates because their participation in a charitable womanless beauty pageant is your evidence they’re real cross-dressers, you are contributing to our country’s ultimate demise. Your foolish arguing on the fringes against those whom you assess against your personal measuring stick of some imagined significance makes you Nero while Rome burned. Stop fiddling and be a warrior. Help stop the fire before we only have ashes left.

Holly Audette is a small-business owner active in political and civic causes.